This post is a response to this Twitter question posted to the #edchat thread by HollyWood. This is a great question. Why the post… well because I couldn’t wrap it up in 140 characters #140characterfail.
Quick Answer: It depends. It’s not an easy YES … or … NO.
Long Answer: (here’s my shortlist… but there is certainly more to add…)
- If the “test” is a traditional multiple choice, T/F, Fill in type of thing… and we as teachers, indicate (picture the big red pen “X”) which question was incorrectly answered…. then ask students to retest and fix those wrong answers. Then NO it is not preparing them for College/Career readiness. NO – retest is not good.
- It also depends on if this test is a “Practice-It” type of assessment … or if it is a “Prove-It” type of assessment (high-stakes-ish, summative). Practice-It assessments should be just that. Getting things wrong, and getting feedback should be part of the learning. Really good feedback is critical! YES – retest is good.
- If it is a Prove-It type of assessment, I do believe in the retest. but I don’t believe we should indicate which answers are right or wrong. Rather, just indicate you didn’t make the 80% cut score to pass. YES – retest is good.
- What if the assessment is: take a concept and MAKE something that works…? this takes a page out of the PBL or CBL book. In this case, retesting is absolutely the largest part of the work. If the widget doesn’t work… you troubleshoot (i.e. retest) and fix what was wrong and retest it. YES – retest is good.
- Teaching doesn’t always = learning… but failing does, most of the time. When you get something wrong, and no one ever points it out – or worse yet, it doesn’t matter that it was wrong, then it is safe to say that learning is minimized from that experience. BUT if we fail, fail often, fail quickly, & it matters… then we can get a ton of added learning value.
RE-testing and Ed Tech:
What does this have to do with Education Technology? Everything. If we are truly using technology in a transformative way with our content. Collaborative Tools are probably embedded in activities. Not to mention that Digital Assessments (formative & summative) are everywhere contributing to BIG Data experiences for teachers. Education Technologies can add major value to assessments and learning experiences. Great design can add quick feedback to students to build in the learning of what questions were missed. AND technologies can help cut through the clutter and help make assessing for understanding more efficient. BUT… please be careful – technologies, due to increasing efficiencies, can also lead to over assessment. Don’t forget:
“you can’t get a cow fat by weighing it.”
What other scenarios can you add to this list?
Good topic. As far as “re-testing” in general, I agree that it definitely depends on the context and what you refer to as “re-testing”. A few examples:
When it comes to video games, one sort of re-testing occurs constantly. If a player is going through some sort of mission or trying to defeat an enemy, defeat or failure occurs regularly. What I’ve seen in my own home is that regularly saving progress allows the player to try again (and again and again) until there is success. If a video game doesn’t allow you to save progress along the way and you had to complete a game from start to finish in one attempt, I think it would change the entire design of the game. Maybe that’s a point to be made. Our ‘testing’ in the education environment drives the teaching far too often. You hear that mentioned regularly. Are we seeing the “testing” change to some extent? There is much more talk of formative assessment now than there was in the past. The technology allows assessment to occur more regularly and feedback to be obtained more easily. Is that beneficial? It CAN be but it isn’t always the case. Is it beneficial to play video games? It CAN be if a ‘player’ is training to fly an unmanned aircraft for military purposes. It doesn’t have to be, though.
Surely you’ve heard of the project where students build bridges with balsa wood – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsa_wood_bridge – to test bridge structure. It’s a pretty good way to teach some physics concepts. How much failure and “re-testing” has to occur to build a bridge that can hold sufficient weight. Likewise, I’m sure that there are many physicists, chemists, engineers and other professionals today that spend days/weeks/years trying different solutions to a large problem.
In some ways, I do struggle with “re-testing”. I remember going through school and the “incentive” to do your homework was the fact that you would get a zero for an assignment that you chose not to complete. Now, there are initiatives in districts to allow for that assignment to be ‘made up’ after the fact. In some cases, that’s great because things happen that can cause an assignment to be missed. You could also argue that this is teaching procrastination and complacency, because there’s no reason to take initiative if there will always be a second chance.
I could just as easily state real-world occupations that aren’t conducive to “training by failure”. I don’t want my doctor, attorney or accountant to use my situation as a failure and eventually help them get better at their work. I expect them to be right the first time. The same holds true with my home builder, electrician, mechanic and virtually any worker in the service industry.
Maybe it’s time to treat different subjects differently and re-think assessment as we know it. If I’m writing an opinion paper on a literary piece, “the answer” isn’t as right/wrong or crystal clear as a math problem. Come to think of it, how many multiple choice tests do you take in your job today? Shouldn’t college and career readiness lead us to project-based learning rather than multiple-choice tests?
/soapbox #commentbecameablogentry
I agree with both of you. As a matter of fact, I teach science in a standards-based classroom and a, in my opinion, great deal of technology is used so, I see the validity in retesting. What I am seeing with my students; however, is more of the complacency. I don’t “grade” homework but rather use it as a tool to further understanding or prepare for a lesson the next day. If you don’t complete the work, you are behind. I guess the reasoning for my original question stems from the fact that rather than students being responsible for a knowledge base of a certain amount of material, they get to assess their entire knowledge base and then come back and “fix” the parts they don’t know. While that sounds fair to me, I KNOW that colleges do not implement the same philosophy. I am afraid that we are giving students this false impression that on a summative assessment, it is ok to party on Thursday night, blow off study session and what not because you can come back in on Tuesday and show that you learned it once the hangover wears off. We all know that is NOT the case.
I am a huge supporter of SBG and so I feel completely contradictory in my beliefs. I am just not sure at what point we say to our students, “You have to step up and know what you are talking about.” Even for the students that do not go to college and enter a factory or whatever job, this is not indictative of what the real world is like. If I have a student who farms and they haven’t learned at what point in the tobacco growing season they need to top their tobacco, they are going to lose a whole season’s crop, and wages, because their initial trial didn’t work. At some point, they are going to have their feet held to the fire and I am not sure we are preparing them for that time. #continuingtheblog